PART 1: THE DISPLACEMENT ON BOARD
The moment the heavy pressurized cabin doors of the chartered Boeing 737 sealed with a muted thud, a cold dread coiled tightly in my stomach. Soft instrumental music drifted from the ceiling speakers to calm the passengers, but to my ears, it sounded like a guitar string pulled far too tight and ready to snap at any second. The senior executives of Vanguard Dynamics were already settling into their wide leather seats, filling the aisle with a low hum of corporate anticipation. But as soon as the sharp heels of my pumps clicked against the navy carpet, every conversation abruptly died.
Their eyes turned toward me with the ravenous excitement of a crowd waiting for the opening scene of a tragic play. A hushed whisper drifted from the third row as someone noted that the CEO’s wife had finally arrived. The quiet remark rippled through the sterile air like a heavy stone dropped into a calm pond.
Clutching my custom designer leather tote bag, I walked down the aisle while looking toward my usual spot. Row one, window seat, had always been my undisputed territory. Throughout four exhausting years of marriage to Aaron Prescott, I had sat directly to his right on every long business flight. I was the person who handed him warm water whenever his stomach acted up, and I was the person who double checked his quarterly reports while he slept. I was deeply accustomed to that seat, and I assumed he was too.
However, a completely different woman was sitting in my spot today.
She was wearing a tight emerald knit dress that left very little to the imagination, her thick curly hair draped casually over one shoulder. Leaning closely toward Aaron, she held a peeled orange slice and guided it directly toward his lips.
This was Jasmine Miller, the personal executive assistant he had hired six months ago. Office gossip always described her as exceptionally competent and fully aware of her boundaries. Looking at her now, those rumors were clearly wrong.
Aaron leaned back against the dark leather headrest with a sleek tablet resting on his knees. His sharp, tailored side profile exuded his signature icy detachment. He did not bite the fruit from her fingers, but he made no effort to move away either. Watching their intimate posture felt like a dull knife sliding between my ribs.
I stopped dead in the middle of the aisle, causing the air in the aircraft to feel instantly frozen.
Only then did Jasmine start her dramatic performance by pretending she had just noticed my presence. Her hand gave a violent tremble, sending the wet orange slice tumbling onto Aaron’s expensive dark trousers. She let out a breathless gasp, grabbed a wipe from the console, and began frantically rubbing his leg. Her fast movements were sloppy, sticky, and intentionally suggestive.
“Oh my goodness, I am so sorry, Mr. Prescott! I did not mean to do that, but I noticed your blood sugar was dropping,” she stammered in a soft whisper that felt completely calculated.
Aaron raised his large hand and caught her wrist firmly to stop her rubbing. He finally looked up at me with cold, calculating eyes that seemed to treat me like an uninvited intern who had wandered into a board meeting.
“Why are you standing there in the middle of the aisle?” Aaron asked in a flat voice that carried the exhaustion one uses on a misbehaving child. “The logistics team behind you needs to board.”
I stared at him while feeling my chest tighten painfully. “That is my seat, Aaron.”
He sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jasmine gets severe motion sickness, and the front row feels much more stable, so I told her to sit here. Go back to row five because my assistant reserved two seats for you beside my parents.”
His parents were currently lounging in row three while looking over their reading glasses. This chartered flight was pitched as an end-of-year team building trip to Honolulu, but Aaron had hijacked the trip to bring his family along.
Noticing the rising tension, my mother-in-law leaned out into the aisle with a voice dripping with patronizing disdain. “Oh, Alyssa, please do not make a scene. Jasmine is a delicate girl who stayed up until three in the morning finishing Aaron’s business projections, so you should show some consideration for the working staff and sit in row five where there is plenty of room.”
A heavy silence swallowed the cabin as senior executives suddenly pretended to look out the windows while younger staff stared fixedly at their phones. In their eyes, Aaron was a self-made tech pioneer, whereas I was merely a wealthy socialite riding his coattails.
Jasmine stood up with tears welling in her eyes in a performance that seemed perfectly rehearsed. “Mrs. Prescott, I am so sorry because this is completely my fault. I should not have been greedy for a comfortable seat, so I will go to the back right now even if I have to stand near the restroom.”
As she moved into the aisle, her ankle wobbled dramatically and caused her to stumble against Aaron’s broad shoulder. He caught her by the waist to balance her, his eyebrows knitting into a harsh frown as he turned his frustration toward me.
“Alyssa Vance, must you make a public spectacle in front of my entire executive team?” Aaron barked loudly. “You need to think about the bigger picture for once instead of acting like a spoiled child after four years of marriage.”
His words about the bigger picture echoed in my mind. I had put the bigger picture first when he drank himself into an emergency room while trying to impress early investors, staying awake for two days straight to cover his duties. I had put the bigger picture first when photographers caught him with a female vendor, wearing a formal gown to an industry gala just to squash the rumors.
When his business hit a catastrophic cash flow crisis, I went behind my father’s back and transferred one point five billion dollars from my family trust as an interest-free loan to keep his company afloat. When his engineering team hit a wall, I convinced my brother to lead a team that spent nine months creating thirteen vital technology patents, licensing them to Vanguard Dynamics for free.
I had treated my sacrifices as acts of devotion, but he treated them as his absolute right.
